Work Text:
Three one - Conner watched the small child - Tim - as he flicked quickly through many, many, many choices for them to watch, before he finally settled on one that was called Cinderella. The movie didn’t seem to be holding Tim’s attention, though. Tim seemed to be much more interested in studying him - which Conner thought was understandable of him.
Conner was a freak; was an object after all. He only existed because his owner decided to create him. He was only there because his kidnappers deemed this to be the best spot for him to exist. Conner had to admit though…
This was his favourite group of owners and doctors and his favourite outer-territory cell.
The very air around him was clean, but in a different clean way than his first cell, or the adjoining outer territory, was clean. The air inside of his pod was painful-crisp-clean, while the air in the outer room was sharp-stinging-clean. This air…
This air was like gentle-warm-clean, which wasn’t anything three - Conner had ever experienced before. The closest he had come was when his not-owners had placed him in the vehicle to bring him to his maybe-not-owners. But it hadn’t been as… untainted as this air. This air seemed…
Pure.
Unlike him. Thre - Conner wilted. It didn’t even feel like he was worthy to breathe this air. It was too good for a clone like him.
“Are you superman?” Conner jumped when Tim spoke up. He looked over and found the kid still staring at him intensely. “You have to be Superman. I don’t like him as much as Batman but I’ve seen him once and you must be him. How did we meet? Do you recognize me? You should, with how we met.”
“Uh… I’m not Superman?” Conner said, unsurely. He didn’t think he was Superman - at least not yet. He hadn’t earned a one before his number.
“I didn’t think so.” Tim nodded. He seemed to be satisfied. “You look like him, but you also don’t look like him. I didn’t think that I had mistaken his identity that terribly. If I had, I don’t know if Batman would allow me to stay in the manor - Catwoman telling him to adopt me or not.”
“I was… created to be Superman if he ever turned out to be evil?” Conner tried. It seemed like relevant information.
“That’s why you look like him.” Tim looked like Conner had just given him the bit of information he was missing; which - hey! Conner had been right! And that meant that he was starting to learn how to read people. “You were created?”
“Yeah?” Conner nodded. “I - I was -I am Superman’s clone. I’m - I’m not really a person.”
“I don’t think I am either.” Tim said like it was normal.
“You’re a liar.” Conner said automatically. There was no way that this child was an experiment that managed to survive being exterminated. His Owner was too careful for that. “None of the other experiments survived.”
“I’m not one of those experiments, I'm the Drake’s experiment.” Tim stuck out his tongue. Three one four point nine - wasn’t the only one? He wasn’t the only one who had been created?
Conner was relieved.
“You were created too?” he asked.
“Yeah. I think so at least. I don’t feel real, and I don’t feel alive. I mean, I’m pretty sure I am alive, but I don’t feel like it. I feel like a character on a string, playing to someone ideals and beliefs and all that. That I only exist for others, not myself - but like, in a way where I’ve never really been my own person. I’ve only ever existed for everyone else to be able to use to live better. That I’m just here for that reason, to provide for everyone else because I’m not really alive so I don’t actually matter.” Tim told him. “And I know that I was created because my parents wanted a baby, and then they got me. And then once they had me they gave me to the school to raise because they were busy. So like, I don’t think that I’m actually real. I was just - made for others to be who they needed.”
“That’s - I was only created in case Superman turned evil and something had to stop him, and then be put in his place and be able to be controlled.” Conner thought about it. “I think you’re right. And maybe that’s why we were both brought here. Because our new owners saw how we were created and wanted us for themselves.”
“That’s why I fell off the building even though I never had before while taking pictures!” Tim hissed. His eyes were alight, and he seemed delighted at having figured out why he’d fallen off the building. “It was because whatever is controlling me and whatever put me here in this world decided that I’m needed for our owners!”
“They told me not to call them owners.” Conner suddenly remembered.
“Adults tell kids lots of things.” Tim waved his hand. “I was told to call him Bruce, so maybe that’s what we should call him? Maybe he wants to hide the fact that we aren’t alive and not human from everyone by treating us like we’re normal.”
“I wasn’t told anything to call any of the grown owners, except for the one who moves faster than what he should be able to. He told me to call him Barry, because he wasn’t my owner and that I no longer have an owner.” Conner told him.
“But then he gave you to Bruce?” Tim seemed to think. “He gave you away to Bruce, and I was also given away to Bruce and he was told to keep me.”
“I think that the one who is the oldest of the young owners told him he was keeping me.” Conner thought back to what had happened after he had been taken. A lot had happened though, and Conner wasn’t a one he was a zero, so he wasn’t wasn’t very smart or good at keeping track of everything that had happened.
“So obviously whoever actually controls us and the lives that we have has figured out that Batman and Robin and Nightwing and Agent A need us and what we bring with us from the information that our puppet masters made us have.”
“I did have information uploaded into my head!” Conner latched onto the thought.
This child was making so much sense. Conner never should’ve doubted him.
“And I’m always expected to know way more than I should!” Tim beamed at him. “Look at that; we found another one who isn’t really alive!”
“What?”
Jason had been waiting for how this day could get weirder. He didn’t think that it couldn’t possibly get any weirder, no. He knew better than that. You think that thought and then suddenly Batman was dressed up like Hello Kitty and was pirouette-ing to kick someone in the face.
Jason had never lived a weirder day than that.
He’d also never gather so much blackmail material in two hours before or since.
So, when nothing was happening with the group (other than everyone pretending that they couldn’t see Alfred taking polaroid’s of them all. Jason knew that the man used every chance he could to take pictures of them to add to his collection of happy family memories - Jason’s favourite was when they managed to make Bruce purple with green hair), Jason decided to tag along with Bruce when he finally left Dick to go and see Old Baby and Tumbling Timbers. That was probably where the chaos was happening.
“- At that; we found another one who isn’t really alive!” The bite-sized Timbit was saying.
“What?” Jason blurted out before he could help himself. He looked at Bruce, and he could see that he had on Grimace Number Eight; which meant that he was as confused as he was concerned.
Jason felt a bit better that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what Tim meant by what’d he’d said.
“Conner was created just like me! Neither of us is alive like you regular humans! In fact; I’m not sure I’m alive at all.” Tim shrugged like it was normal.
“Tim;” Jason was pretty sure that was the first time that Conner had used anyone’s name, “and I connected the reasons why we were both brought here! It all makes sense now; we’re the same!”
Which was probably the reason why Conner used Tim’s name. He thought they were both clones. But that wasn’t why either of them were brought here.
“The only thing you two did was connect yourselves to appointments with the Canary Queen.” Jason said without thinking. He pointed at Conner. “You I can understand, what with how the Naked Mole Rat made you - but he was born to actual human parents so that means that something is very wrong here.”
Tim and Conner both pouted at him; Cinderella magically transforming into her ballgown in the background.
Jason privately thought that the Bats were about to play Furry Godmother to the pair of Cinderella’s they had just rescued.